Oregon trail how long
Some people continued south into California. Some settlers looked at the Oregon Trail with an idealistic eye, but it was anything but romantic. Most people died of diseases such as dysentery, cholera , smallpox or flu, or in accidents caused by inexperience, exhaustion and carelessness.
It was not uncommon for people to be crushed beneath wagon wheels or accidentally shot to death, and many people drowned during perilous river crossings. Travelers often left warning messages to those journeying behind them if there was an outbreak of disease, bad water or hostile American Indian tribes nearby. As more and more settlers headed west, the Oregon Trail became a well-beaten path and an abandoned junkyard of surrendered possessions.
It also became a graveyard for tens of thousands of pioneer men, women and children and countless livestock. Over time, conditions along the Oregon Trail improved.
Bridges and ferries were built to make water crossings safer. Settlements and additional supply posts appeared along the way which gave weary travelers a place to rest and regroup. Trail guides wrote guidebooks, so settlers no longer had to bring an escort with them on their journey. Unfortunately, however, not all the books were accurate and left some settlers lost and in danger of running out of provisions.
With the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in Utah in , westward wagon trains decreased significantly as settlers chose the faster and more reliable mode of transportation. It was also a main thoroughfare for massive cattle drives between and By , the railroads had all but eliminated the need to journey thousands of miles in a covered wagon.
Settlers from the east were more than happy to hop a train and arrive in the West in one week instead of six months. Although modern progress ended the need for the Oregon Trail, its historical significance could not be ignored. The National Park Service named it a National Historic Trail in and continues to educate the public on its importance.
First Emigrants on the Michigan Trail. Oregon California Trails Association. Marcus Whitman Narcissa Whitman Oregon Donation Land Act. The Oregon Encyclopedia. Oregon or Bust. Arizona Geographic Alliance. Most people moving west traveled in covered wagons, which were large enough for all their belongings as well as the food they needed for a journey that could take months. The wagons also provided shelter from the weather. Teams of oxen or mules pulled the wagons along the dusty trail. Courtesy Oreg.
Research Library, OrHi George Himes from the Oregon Historical Society is seated second from the right. Research Library. Illustration of one of the many trail hazards: mud. Artist was George H. Baker, and his drawings appeared in Crossing the Plains, by J. The Oregon History Wayfinder is an interactive map that identifies significant places, people, and events in Oregon history.
Applegate, Jesse. Barlow, Mary S. Bowen, William A. Seattle: University of Washington Press, Burcham, Mildred Baker. Clark, Keith, and Lowell Tiller. Terrible Trail: The Meek Cutoff. Caldwell, ID: Caxton, Faragher, John Mack. Men and Women on the Overland Trail. New Haven: Yale University Press, Haines, Aubrey L. Historic Sites along the Oregon Trail. Gerald, MO: Patrice Press, Johnson, David Alan.
Founding the Far West. Berkeley: University of Calififornia Press, Kaiser, Leo, and Priscilla Knuth, eds. Kroll, Helen. Mattes, Merrill J. The Great Platte River Road. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, McClelland, John M. Longview Publishing, Miller, James D. Minto, John. Moore, Shirley Ann Wilson. Oregon Trail Emigrant Resources. Oregon State Library, Salem. Parkman, Francis. New York: Knickerbocker Magazine, Reid, John Phillip.
Taylor, Quintard. Garcia, and Terry P. Wilson, Lexington, MA: D. Heath, Vaughan, Chelsea. Skip to main content. About 80, pioneers used it to reach Oregon, and about 20, to Washington before the transcontinental railroad in Most settled in Oregon , especially in the Willamette Valley, but about 20 percent moved on to Washington state before Others went to California.
No complete list of pioneer settlers who traveled the Oregon Trail is known to exist. However, a variety of sources exist which can be used to identify many of them.
Some of these sources may reveal their place of origin. Federal: The federal Donation Act of encouraged settlement of Oregon Territory by granting acres to white male citizens, or those who intended to become citizens, who settled on the land prior to 1 December Wives were eligible for an additional acres.
White male citizens who arrived between 1 December and 1 December could apply for acres, with wives receiving an equivalent amount. The act further provided for similar grants to those of mixed Indian-white parentage who were already in the territory; and it required settlers who had staked claims previously to refile them.
Amendments in and cut the residency-cultivation requirement in half and extended the filing date to April After federal land was transferred to a settler, subsequent deeds were recorded in county courthouses. Local and county histories and biographies in Oregon also may help identify additional pioneers.
For example:. Ezra Meeker. Local histories and biographies from those places may also include some pioneers who traveled the Oregon Trail. Footpath to wagon road. The route of the Oregon Trail was first discovered by fur trappers about Several expeditions of government men explored and mapped parts of the trail in , , , and It was originally a footpath or mule pack train trail.
In the first fur trade rendezvous wagons reached the Green River in Wyoming. By when the first pioneer wagon train was organized in Independence, Jackson County, Missouri Genealogy , the wagon trail went as far as Fort Hall. By the wagon road reached the Dalles Oregon where pioneers could raft down the Columbia River. In the Barlow Road around Mt. Hood finally reached Oregon City.
Oregon boundary dispute. But pressure was being exerted against Canada. In American pioneer groups began migrating over the Oregon Trail into Oregon.
Thousands came over the next decade, far more than from Canada. Slogans of the American presidential campaign clamored for war to take Washington and British Columbia by force.
Reasons for migrating. Mountain men fur trappers were the earliest to use the Oregon Trail. A few early missionaries came in the s. Larger groups of American settlers began arriving in The California Gold Rush of contributed significantly to west coast migration.
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